Providing Care to People with Dementia: An Educational workshop

Informal (family) caregivers providing care to loved ones experiencing symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease navigate multiple challenges. Caregivers observe and respond to changes in their loved ones related to physical, emotional and social skills. While providing care to their loved ones, caregivers must be aware of their own needs and the importance of maintaining a balance between the responsibilities of being a caregiver and the responsibilities in other areas of their life. Maintenance of positive emotional and physical health is crucial to providing effective and safe care. Identification of methods to promote the positive health of informal caregivers becomes increasingly important as their loved one demonstrates progression towards the next stage of dementia, changing the amount and type of care required. Each individual caregiver has different needs, routines, values and responsibilities which require a personalized approach and adoption of different coping mechanisms. Identifying individual goals, challenges and interests allows for educational programs, such as “Providing Care to People with Dementia: An Educational Workshop”, to be tailored and modified to fit the need for caregiver education within multiple populations and settings. Inclusion of interactive components and peer support is also beneficial to the learning process and implementation in a caregivers’ daily life. Acknowledgement of the amount of care being provided and experience level of each caregiver ensures that the proper information and guidance is being provided with the goal of increasing the quality of life for both the caregiver and individual receiving care.https://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonesfall2021/1018/thumbnail.jp

Correction to: Assessing the acceptability of a text messaging service and smartphone app to support patient adherence to medications prescribed for high blood pressure: a pilot study.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s40814-020-00666-2.]

Testing a Self-Affirmation Intervention for Improving the Psychosocial Health of Black and White Medical Students

Self-affirmation interventions have been shown to mitigate the negative psychological effects of stereotype threat on Black students in secondary and undergraduate education. However, there is currently limited research testing whether Black students in medical schools may also experience the negative influences of stereotype threat. Until now, it has been unclear whether Black (vs. White) students experience a lower sense of belonging in medical school and whether they can benefit from self-affirmation interventions during medical training. With a longitudinal field experiment, we tested (a) whether Black (vs. White) medical students in the US experience decrements in psychological well-being (i.e., fatigue, depression, anxiety), sense of belonging, perceived residency competitiveness, and residency goal stability; and (b) the extent to which a self-affirmation intervention would ameliorate any observed disparities in these outcomes for Black students. With a sample of 234 Black and 182 White medical students across 50 schools in the US, we found that Black students tended to report more fatigue and less belonging than White students; however, the self-affirmation intervention did not significantly influence students’ fatigue, depression, anxiety, or belonging. Unexpectedly, Black students in the self-affirmation (vs. control) condition reported lower perceived competitiveness for residency. White students’ perceived competitiveness for residency was unaffected by the intervention. Exploratory analyses revealed that Black (vs. White) students were less likely to indicate stable residency goals over time, which may be an indication of threat; however, this racial gap was eliminated with the intervention. We discuss the plausible reasons for these findings and provide recommendations for future work in this area